Day
by Seryn
Summary: A picture of what it would have been like - calm, with the three of them close but far away.


_Eragon is Christopher's._

**Note:** This fic has been beta'd once by the lovely flufflybunny, and she did give me some criticism, which I haven't changed. But I'm just sticking it on here to serve as a testimony of how crap I am, and give me something to cringe at when I go back and look at it.

And...sorry to the people who've got me on alert. I'll get back -hinthint- to that fandom soon.

* * *

That day; a calm before the storm. He leaned back against his dragon, hair falling to unmanageability (but when had he cared about such things, anyway?) even while he stared up at the sunlit sky. Away from him he could see - feel - the restlessness of the child seated next to the adult (long-ago adult), all three knowing and not-knowing what they must do.

He may have been a man; in truth, simply a boy grown up far too quickly for his own sake, but his eyes were hungry and lit with an inner fire that dazed even the boisterous experiences of the man's (not too far out of childhood himself, he thinks with bittersweet tastes) own. He catches - one glimpse! - of those eyes when they turn to seek out his own, and his breath hitches in involuntary function before they turn away.

His dragon shifts, black against the shading of the trees, the smell of the air crisp but scented with copper, wisping away on the faint breeze. Behind their backs - where he sits guarding that last, precious day together - a last day before betrayal for certain (his or theirs, he knows not), and lets them sit together and enjoy each other's presence.

At length the child-turned-man puts an arm around the figure next to him, and she leans into his shoulder, tension falling away from her posture. They look out together, over the edge of the precipice at the sun-washed land below, a medley of greens and whites and shadows, and together their dragons - blue and gold, sun-draped, are flying.

Murtagh smiles.

--

That day; last serene day before...before. He closed his eyes, reaching out with his hand and his mind, searching for the sword that is there, and the dragon that is his. One vague shadow, backlit brightly against the gold-tint sky; one cold hilt, warmed with leather and the shards of jewels. The blade of both, he knows, sparks reassuringly against his mind, feverish and chilled.

Behind the gaze of his eyelids, he knows the images that will appear instantly, breathing in the air that is almost bloody iron crashing with sounds that leave his ears ringing. He knows they are not there, but they are almost real - as real as her head resting with live warmth on his shoulder.

He doesn't think about the contradictions in his life, not anymore. It will only distract him from his course, from his cause, from his quest. If he lets his war-instincts, primitive but prime, wander, he can feel him and his dragon, lying behind him in a pose of relaxation. Relaxed but watching him, hungrily. He knows with what hunger he is regarding him, and knows that at any time if he wants to he can fulfill it.

The soft grass beneath him bends as he shifts position; he lifts his head and stares out at the world, beyond the horizon, that he is meant to save.

Eragon's fists clench - one arm anchored in the ground, one arm rock-hard around her shoulder.

--

That day; primitive instincts arising. She rested her head on his shoulder, smelling his scent. Human musk, certainly, but still...arousing, somewhat. The child had been attracted to her, no doubt about it; a love as chubby and soft as a toddler's smiling cheeks. But now, as a weapon (a broken, reforged weapon, sharp and double-edged) he sook a sheath, and she was not his sheath.

His shoulder twisted under her ear as he turned to look at him, behind them, resting on his dragon. She closed her eyes and let the last tatters of her home - the true tongue, the old tongue, float through her head. Tomorrow would be another day, closer to the end of it all.

She looks out at the sky, orange-gold with the light that comes from everywhere, and knows the darker gold (the gold of greed, the gold-ochre of forbidden lust) is just beyond her sight, playing with artful (and feigned) innocence with his dragon; too young to want to know what is in store for them all, too old to give up any chance at being young again - just like her, in some way.

The scent of the air is sharp - the the faint accent of the trees that line the edge of the cliff give her some comfort, even autumn-gilded as they are; the blood copper lofting through her senses as she thinks of another day, the day when she had left to bring the egg of a blue back to her city but had - not quite - succeeded. On the breeze she catches others; the smell of metal, and loam, and leather, and not-bathed-yet human, and the not so familiar ones of hope and triumph - all mingling together through her.

Her hair hangs loose as he slings an arm around her shoulder (and if she'd been much younger she would have found comfort in it, but as it was it would be like taking comfort from a babe, and a broken one at that) and she forces herself to relax into his embrace. Let him find comfort in it. She will not.

Arya knows which bed of boughs he will crawl onto tonight to find companionship and understanding.

Unlike last night, it will not be hers.

--


End file.
